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St. Paul's atheists are coming out of the closet

MCT
6:01 a.m. CDT August 11, 2014

Atheist Eric Jayne poses Aug. 3 along the outside wall of the St. Paul Saints’ Midway Stadium in St. Paul. The St. Paul Saints, a minor league team, hosts an annual “atheist night” for the past three years. Jayne is the president of the Minnesota Atheists and is also wearing the “Aints” jersey that the Saints players wore during the “atheist night.”
(Photo:
Sherri LaRose-Chiglo/Pioneer Press
)

ST. PAUL – Do atheists get a seat at God's table? In St. Paul, they do now.

The Interfaith Conversation Cafe in St. Paul, which gathers people of many religions for a monthly discussion, is now open to nonreligions. The organizers have removed "faith" from the name, explaining that atheists felt excluded by it, and are calling it the "Interbelief Conversation Cafe."

"We are leaders in the field," said Frank Burton, a member of the Minneapolis branch of Circle of Reason, a group that includes atheists and believers and lobbied for the change.

Minnesota's atheists are coming out of the closet.

The St. Paul Saints have had an atheist-themed baseball game in each of the past three seasons. There's an "Atheists Talk" program on KTNF-AM on Sunday mornings.

Nationally, books on atheism have been best-sellers, and the debut of the channel Atheist TV was announced last week.

"I think atheists are getting organized," said University of Minnesota professor Penny Edgell, who will be teaching what she said is the state's first class in atheism starting in September. "It's a wave of visibility."

But a new report by Edgell shows that while the public has become increasingly accepting of various religious and ethnic groups, but not of atheists.

Why? Unfair stereotypes, atheists say. Religious people say their morals come from God and don't understand where nonbelievers get their morals, but atheists say they are just as likely to behave morally.

"Discourse today really conflates being religious with being a good American," Edgell said.

Growing numbers?

By some measures, these should be booming times for claiming the label "atheist."

According to the Pew Research Center, the "nones," or Americans with no religious affiliation, surged to 20 percent from 15 percent from 2007 to 2012. About a third of people younger than 30 call themselves "nones."

Many of them should call themselves atheists, said August Berkshire, past president of the Minnesota Atheists.

"They fit the definition. They don't pray. They think that when you're dead, you're dead," he said.

Yet the number of self-described atheists has hovered between 1 percent and 2 percent for decades.

Edgell said she soon will publish results of a 2014 survey that documents no significant changes in the level of distrust she found in a 2006 survey.

The earlier survey asked respondents across the country to reply to the statement: "This group does not agree with my visions of American society." Respondents were given choices that included Muslims, recent immigrants, homosexuals, Jews and African-Americans.

Atheists were named by 40 percent of respondents — the highest percentage.

When asked to respond to the statement, "I would disapprove if my child wanted to marry a member of this group," respondents were given most of the same choices. Again, atheists got the largest response — 48 percent.

Edgell cited other studies, saying people would be less likely to vote for atheists than members of any other group, including Catholics, Jews, homosexuals and African-Americans.

Even worse, in 2011, researchers from the University of British Columbia and the University of Oregon surveyed the public with a scenario involving a person doing various unethical things.

The most common way of describing this bad person? "Atheist."

Can you be moral without religion?

The heart of the distrust seems to be the morality of atheists. Edgell said religious people believe that morals come from God — and without God, how can anyone be moral?

"It is rooted in distrust that these might not be good people," she said.

Atheists say they have morals and that anyone — religious or not — can behave immorally.

"There is this belief that without God, this invisible policeman, you would not act morally," Berkshire said.

"But of course, this is not true. Many things are included in morality, such as how we were raised."

Atheists and researchers also say the distrust comes from the fact that atheists have no holy book or universally accepted creed.

When asked for source material for atheist ethics, Edgell cited several books, including "The Age of Atheists," "Freethinkers" and "Atheists — The Origin of the Species."

Berkshire cited the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, and the American Humanist Association's "Humanism and its Aspirations."

Many atheists argue that there isn't a need for a written moral code because a sense of right and wrong springs naturally from the human consciousness.

"If you don't believe in the supernatural, certain things follow. Nothing supernatural is going to help us, so we have to help ourselves," Berkshire said.

"Instead of saying something is sinful, or right or wrong, or moral or immoral, we say: Is it helpful? Is it helpful to society?" he said.

"But there is no litmus test. There is no enforcing of this."

Such arguments persuaded the St. Paul Area Council of Churches to invite atheists into the Conversation Cafe. It was the first local council of religions in the country to do so, said Eric Jayne, president of the Minnesota Atheists.

It's no accident that it happened here, he said.

"Minnesota has a well-educated population, and overall, it's a liberal state," Jayne said. "Even those on the right are more libertarian," which he said means more accepting of atheism.

"You are not going to get this in Alabama," he said.

By including atheists, the Conversation Cafe participants can refine and sharpen their beliefs, said Tom Duke, the group's program coordinator.

"Some people think this is a watering down, that religions are homogenized or reduced in some way," Duke said. "Not at all. We think people can come out with a clearer and deeper understanding by engaging with people with other viewpoints.

"It is not a debate. It is not an attempt to change other people. We are attempting to combat ignorance and negative stereotyping."

Atheists, he said, will introduce the idea that groups may differ about belief in God but still can agree on moral principles.

Atheism was the last thing on the Rev. Daniel Haugan's mind when he went to a Saints game July 11.

Haugan, pastor of the Holy Spirit Church in St. Paul, noticed the jerseys saying "Mr. Paul Aints" instead of "St. Paul Saints."

He had driven an elderly nun to the game and asked her: "Did you bring me here on atheist night? On purpose?"

"She laughed and laughed at that," he said.

Haugen said the atheist message "saddens" him but that he found the atheist-themed game to be a healthy sign of dialogue.

When the atheist-themed game debuted in 2012, it created a nationwide stir, Berkshire said. The Saints were — and remain — the only professional sports team in the nation to make such a move.

Atheists passed out "Get out of hell free" cards. The team sponsored an evolution-themed race, with runners starting out as sea creatures and evolving to primates.

Fox News got wind of the story, said Berkshire, and a commentator said he was going to pray for rain to spoil the game. (It didn't rain.)